I'm looking for advice on laptop computers/configurations that seem to
work for folks. We will be doing some blue water cruising and want to
use it for weatherfax and charting as well as email. Any help
experiences would be appreciated! Also any web sites that deal with the
subject would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, John

S/V Lionheart

Rosalie B. wrote:
John Nagy wrote:

I'm looking for advice on laptop computers/configurations that
seem to work for folks. We will be doing some blue water cruising
and want to use it for weatherfax and charting as well as email.

This is probably not going to be much help, but I find laptops
aren't very reliable. I use them, but I keep adding new ones.

I'm not sure that I wouldn't recommend a chart plotter for
navigation for blue-water.

I guess my luck has been a little better than Rosalie's. I put a Toshiba on
in 1993 and it lasted until about 2000. I finally replaced it since it was
just too slow for charting, etc. Next I put on an Inspiron 7500 which has
done pretty well since about May 2000.

Typically these boxes are used for coastal cruising. In cases where I do a
couple nights offshore, I tend to load a route from the computer into one of
the GPS units and stow the computer. There's not much to see on the
offshore chart, and this procedure seems like a good way to keep the salt
out of the electronics. In any case, the GPS unit and a radar watch are a
reasonable combination for keeping on top of things offshore, and they both
take to salt air better than any laptop.

BTW, I don't think there are any realistic choices other than laptops. I
know folks who have used desktops, but the power and space requirements are
excessive on smaller yachts. Also, I wouldn't waste $ on "marinized"
computers. They are in general not as powerful as a regular off-the-shelf
box dollar for dollar, and there is usually no reason to keep a laptop on
deck anyway.
--
Good luck and good sailing.
s/v Kerry Deare of Barnegat
http://kerrydeare.tripod.com

You might want to think about getting one that has a real serial port. Many
of the new computers don't include them anymore and if you want to hook up
your GPS you will need the extra complication and cost of a serial to USB
converter cable and software that may or may not work very well. Other than
that, I would think a laptop for a relatively hazardous boating enviornment
should probably be on the low end cost wise. You can still get some pretty
powerful machines that come in around a thousand dollars or so and will do
everything you need.

I've been in the market too and have lately been looking here
http://www.powernotebooks.com/index.php3 .
Along with a sterling reputation, they seem to have some pretty interesting
machines at good prices. Last week Best Buy had a Toshiba A15-S127 Satellite
on sale for $699. I almost went for it but it has no serial port and old USB
1.1 ports so I decided to keep looking.


"John Nagy" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for advice on laptop computers/configurations that seem to
work for folks. We will be doing some blue water cruising and want to
use it for weatherfax and charting as well as email. Any help
experiences would be appreciated! Also any web sites that deal with the
subject would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, John

S/V Lionheart

By coincidence, I mentioned this yesterday to a pal who just bought a
liveaboard and was mulling over getting a desktop for the nav station:

"Personally, I would go for the laptop for heat/power consumption
issues, and add components via FireWire/USB as needed. A desktop
underway pulls a large number of watts, you know, whereas a laptop
(like a used ThinkPad) is cheap, low-power, versatile and most
importantly, can be taken off the boat and NOT STOLEN. Unless you are
building a ship's safe, I would stick with a laptop I could slide into
the nav station in heavy weather. Their hard drives can stand the
movement better as well.

Now, what I would suggest is running remote mouse, keyboard and flat
screen from that laptop: Think this way: Turn on the laptop and stow
it safely in a padded nav station slot. Run a regular keyboard and
mouse to the nav table top. Get an armature with a light 15" LCD flat
screen monitor on it. Interface through SeaTalk with radar,
GPS/chartplotter, etc. Extend the armature with screen into the
companionway when underway, or mount it into the bulkhead (it's a
Naiagar 35 with a bulkhead at the base of the companionway). Put an
infrared receiver into the flat-screen housing. Put a wireless mouse
into your pocket.

Now, while sailing, you can switch between chartplotter, GPS, radar
and Internet by pointing and clicking at the screen that's five feet
in front of you and three times the size of the "integrated" displays
Raytheon, etc. sell. The PC itself is below, nice and dry. The
keyboard is stowed. The mouse is in your pocket. You have a totally
functional outfit, and yet you pull out three cords and you can take
the laptop ashore for safety, etc. You can also move the laptop into
the cabin to do your logs. You can back up to a portable hard drive or
burn "log" CD-ROMs.

Sound good? I have no clue why people buy dedicated $3000 multipurpose
units when a guy like your partner for instance could wire a bunch of
sending units to a circa-2001 $800 used laptop running Windows 2000
(don't use XP for mission-critical!)"

The bonus is that a two-year old laptop is far more likely to have a
serial port and yet will be plenty powerful enough to run all current
nav/charting software.

R.

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On 4 Sep 2003 18:19:13 -0700,
Conor Crowley wrote:
I've been going back and forth a lot on this issue myself. For $1000 I
can either get an okay laptop, or three (3) desktops of the same
caliber. Since I also plan to mount a widescreen LCD on an arm that
will reach my companioway, that will add ~$700 to the cost of either
laptop or desktop. But with desktops, I could have two backup/guest
systems for the same price.

Since I'm not all that concerned about weight or space, I think at
this stage my primary concern is power consumption. I'm told by those
who sell "marine" laptops that laptops in general use a lot less
power, yet I read in computer trade rags that modern desktops are just
as energy efficient. I would be willing to bet they're pretty close -
especially if you configure the same sleep mode type options (start
shutting down parts of the system that aren't being used). But..... I
really don't know.

So, my question is: does anyone have any hard data on this subject or
perhaps some links? Also looking for information on how I might go
about measuring actual power consumtpion myself.



If you are careful in what you put in the desktop machine (no mondo
gamer video card, no row of RAID drives etc) then the difference between
a laptop wLCD screen, and a desktop w/LCD screen, is marginal in real
terms. My Laptop comes with a powersupply rated for ~70W, it draws far
less than that of course. The Shuttle mini PC we have, has a 240 (IIRC)
again, it draws nothing like that normally. The laptop is a PIII/1GHz,
the desktop, a PIV/2GHz. Both machines put out more heat than I would
prefer. I've gone over this before myself, wondering which makes sense
to buy. and came to the conclusion that it could go either way
Laptops take less space, and mostly, less power, but are far more
expensive and less rugged, plus, they can't be repaired easily, or
cheaply. At least in the states, I can buy just about anything I need to
repair the desktop machines, in any reasonably sized town. Not so the
laptops.

Laptops tend to pack away much smaller, the screen being attached really
helps there. Oh, most laptops have a higher res screen than you can
reasonably get with a desktop LCD. My Dell laptop has a 1600x1200, which
frankly, for a 15" format screen, is actually a bit too large. But
I manage

I am looking into a cerfcube for general use, nice little low power ARM7
system, draws maybe 200ma of +12VDC, but then, I don't use Microsoft
Windows, so am not stuck on the x86 platform.

Another thing I am looking into, are some of the rackmount cases that
use passive heat dissapation, big heatsinks and heatpipes for the CPUs,
use lower power "Mobile" cpus (more $$ than the standard of course, but
not too bad) and no fans, no fan noise, no moving parts. That and some
solid state storage, Compact flash drives of 256MB or so (do you
*really* need a 120GB drive for general use on the boat? ) A big
advantage of passive cooling like that, is the ability to seal the case,
so no moisture/dust can get in. Set up any big drives in a different
enclosure, with Firewire, and turn them off when not needed. That's what
we do with the CD/DVD burner, and the printer, don't use them? turn them
off.

As for measuring the power draw, a simple ammeter and a modified power
cable will usually suffice, but with the laptop, be sure to get the
current draw with batteries being charged, and without. Oh, that's
another advantage of laptops (and one of their weaknesses) the batteries
give you a built in UPS.


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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock

Linux, because eventually, you grow up enough to be trusted with a fork()

One question that needs to be addressed is repair. Having delved into
repairing a laptop and trying to find parts, I know how near-impossible this
is. Seriously consider a small tower and build it up with of-the-shelf parts
you can get at most computer places or cheaply obtained on-line. You can
replace bad components easily and any local computer store can also do it.
Look into DC/DC power supplies (same form factor as PC power supplies). Some
of the small form factor PCs, like shuttle are interesting but their
mother-board is not easily available and with most major components on the
mother-board, if one goes bad its a new mother-board! Don't get me wrong, I
like laptops but there are some inherent problems with them for on-board
use.

HTH

Vic

--
__________________________________________________ ______

Victor Fraenckel - The Windman
KC2GUI www.windsway.com

Home of the WindReader Electronic Theodolite
Read the WIND

"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long
and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival."
- Winston [Leonard Spencer] Churchill (1874 - 1965)

Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?
-Count Oxenstierna (ca 1620) to the young King Gustavus Adolphus

"Dick Locke" wrote in message
...
| On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 02:00:24 -0700, Jim Richardson
| wrote:
|
| Laptops take less space, and mostly, less power, but are far more
| expensive and less rugged, plus, they can't be repaired easily, or
| cheaply.
|
| I'm still hoping someone (other than me ;-) ) has looked into or tried
| the Dell SX260/SX270. Under 3.5 x 10 x 10 inches, external power
| supply, laptop-type disc drive (I think) , serial port, looks like it
| might be mountable through an instrument panel.
|
| http://www.dell.com/us/en/bsd/produc...ptix_sx270.htm
|
| Not cheap, looks like suitably decked out it will be around $1,000.
|
| Jim, specwise, any comments?

My primary reason for a laptop is that I can do my banking and Email at my
leisure and then Carry it to find a store or other phone port to get to my bank
and IP. Up load and down load only takes a couple of minutes each. ( My bank
is don direct connect to an 800 number not on line ).

In my travels it isn't hard to find a phone plug to use. Some times after
working hours on the side of buildings.

It runs off the 12V direct.

Mike

On Fri, 05 Sep 2003 17:35:21 GMT, "Vic Fraenckel"
wrote:

One question that needs to be addressed is repair. Having delved into
repairing a laptop and trying to find parts, I know how near-impossible this
is. Seriously consider a small tower and build it up with of-the-shelf parts
you can get at most computer places or cheaply obtained on-line. You can
replace bad components easily and any local computer store can also do it.
Look into DC/DC power supplies (same form factor as PC power supplies). Some
of the small form factor PCs, like shuttle are interesting but their
mother-board is not easily available and with most major components on the
mother-board, if one goes bad its a new mother-board! Don't get me wrong, I
like laptops but there are some inherent problems with them for on-board
use.

HTH

Vic

Well, if space and heat and to a lesser extent, power consumption
aren't issues, then a box PC is a good idea. You still can't beat
modular systems for repair and I could probably build a reasonably
fast system from my junk box/LINUX benchmark box...

However, you still don't have portability, and while this isn't a
problem in North America, laptops being easier to steal out of cars
than boats, it could be a problem elsewhere, where slipping a Sony
VAIO or other ultraslim PC would be a real security advantage.

Perhaps the best of both worlds is a robust mid-sized tower slung
safely in a cushioned rack beneath the nav table, with a video
splitter to a 15" LCD at the station and a small LCD mounted in the
cockpit (if dry enough). Then I would suggest merely that a removable
USB or SCSI hard drive be used, as this would slip practically into a
pocket, and it's the only bit you'd miss when Pentium III systems
(without monitors) around running $300 or so.

Very few programs in use on a boat are particularly
graphics-intensive...even the Fugawi/Oz/etc. programs...because they
are only as fast as GPS updates and the redraws are not particularly
complex.

Oh yes, and because boats travel slower than planes in flight sim
games.

R.

We had a new Dell 4100 laptop on our one year trip to the Bahamas. The DC
power connector flaked out a couple of times and it took all my engineering
skill to disassemble it and fix it. And the fix didn't last. Someone of
lesser electronics abilities would be really stuck. Then I got home to
discover Dell wants $700 fixed fee to fix a laptop if the warantee ran out.
My suggestion if you really want a PC to work:

Don't buy a Dell. Their "Customer Service" policies are awful.

Buy two cheap older laptops, one as a spare. Back up pretty regularly. Maybe
network them together and move data back and forth to backup each machine.
Or use a CDR.

Keep the laptop in one place, strapped down really well. We saw several take
dives off the nav station.

I like the idea of a desktop with LCD monitor for the low cost and easy
spare availability.

My $0.02

Dave Erickson
Apache 37 "Second Sojourn"
www.djerickson.com for lots of nice ICW and Bahamas photos




"John Nagy" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for advice on laptop computers/configurations that seem to
work for folks. We will be doing some blue water cruising and want to
use it for weatherfax and charting as well as email. Any help
experiences would be appreciated! Also any web sites that deal with the
subject would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, John

S/V Lionheart

Dave Erickson wrote:

Buy two cheap older laptops, one as a spare. Back up pretty regularly. ...

That's been my solution for my ham packet stations. Pentium-ones can be
easily found for under $200US (I got one "166" for $35). Batteries are
usually poor or shot but I run them off a $30 inverter anyway. So far
none of the 5 I have have quit (don't go for the door its just me
knocking wood) but if they do I've got my $$$ worth out of them.

73, K3DWW